Russia Strikes Kyiv Hours After US Envoys Leave — SkimNews
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- Russia struck Kyiv after a three-day pause in attacks on both capitals expired, killing at least five people and injuring 30 across five districts — Darnytskyi, Holosiivskyi, Podilskyi, Shevchenkivskyi and Solomianskyi — according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko
- Ukraine's air force said it downed 142 drones, 31 of 32 cruise missiles, and two ballistic missiles launched in the overnight barrage, though it did not disclose how many ballistic missiles Russia had fired
- President Zelenskyy said a Russian drone partially destroyed a Ukrainian TV channel building in Kyiv, while drones also hit buildings in the Boryspil and Fastiv districts on the city's outskirts
- Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha criticized the timing, saying the strikes came the moment 'the US president's peace envoys left,' with the envoy visit to both capitals yielding 'no tangible progress' toward ending the more than four-year war
- President Trump held a phone call with Putin on Tuesday, telling him he wanted a swift end to the war that would allow US-Russia ties to be 'fully restored,' while Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said both leaders rated the envoys' weekend visit 'with a plus sign'
- Russian regional officials reported Ukrainian drone strikes causing casualties in Saratov (nearly 1,000 km from Moscow), the Russia-annexed Crimean Peninsula, and the Kursk and Bryansk regions, though Al Jazeera noted it could not independently confirm those reports
Why it matters: The strikes landed the same day Trump spoke with Putin about ending the war, directly puncturing the diplomatic momentum the Kremlin itself rated 'with a plus sign' after Witkoff and Kushner's weekend visit. Ukraine is now publicly contrasting Russia's diplomatic language with its battlefield behavior — a framing Sybiha explicitly weaponized to argue Putin's missiles outweigh his words, giving Kyiv fresh rhetorical leverage in its push for faster Western air defense deliveries.
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